The Wrong Tool Challenge

It’s important to make things as difficult as possible.  Take a long time to figure things out and be unprepared — words to live by!  I’m pretty sure they sell electric tools to do what I want but that would be cheating.  I’m pretty sure that’s cheating.  

I planned this simple piece that depends heavily on a nice graded sky.  Without an interesting sky, there isn’t much here.  I don’t want an overly dramatic sky, just a clean, blue sky with nice transition.  I prepared three tins of blues and painted them on the board in relatively the correct locations, then I heated the knife in the first image repeatedly on the palette and used it to blend the wax on the board - and got fairly good results.  

I knew that after several layers of clear medium, the transitions would appear smoother, so I purposely left them less blended than I would have.  In the end, I think I made the right decision.  

This is where I left the piece today.  Maybe finished, maybe not.  Still thinking.